Schwarzenegger heading to Washington this weekend for national governors’ confab

When Gov. Schwarzenegger flies to Washington this weekend for the annual winter meeting of the National Governors Association it will mark his first high-profile public visit to the nation’s capital in a little more than a year.

The governor, elected in the special recall vote in October 2003, came east for the governors’ meeting at a hotel just two blocks from the White House the following February and created a media sensation. He then came a few more times, in his role as the “governator” pledged to getting more federal funds for California, and met with Bush administration officials and members of the state’s 53-member House delegation and its two senators.

His last big visit was last February, just before the governors’ meeting, when he was hosted in the Capitol by Rep. David Dreier, R-San Dimas (San Diego County) at a meeting with the state’s House delegation. By this time, the media frenzy had eroded somewhat, with fewer camera crews trailing Schwarzenegger’s every step. But he missed last winter’s governors’ meetings.

The governor makes unannounced private visits to the Washington area because the parents of his wife, Maria Shriver, live in Potomac, Md., a wealthy suburb north of the capital.

The governor plans to fly out from California after addressing the state Republican convention in San Jose Friday evening. Highlights of his D.C. stay include an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday and black-tie dinner that night with the other governors with President and Mrs. Bush at the White House.

On Monday morning, he’ll return to the White House with other governors for business meetings with Bush and other administration leaders.

Schwarzenegger, the bodybuilder turned actor who chaired the federal Council on Physical Fitness when Bush’s father was in the White House, might also be called on to say a few words when the governors take up the nation’s fitness. “A Healthy America” is the governors’ focus this year, their association says, a choice made by the association’s chairman, Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

He has lost a few hundred pounds through diet and exercise and now has become a proselytizer for fitness, a topic right up Schwarzenegger’s alley.

If he stays around till the conference wraps end on Tuesday, Schwarzenegger can hear a closing day speech from another well-known governor and Arkansan, former President Bill Clinton.